Just two weeks ago, a sole gas station in Oklahoma swept headlines for dropping gas prices below $2 a gallon. Today, 13 states have joined that list, and the trend is expanding.

Gas for less than $1.90 a gallon can be found in at least one station in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Ohio, according to CNN. CNN cites 10 additional states– Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas and Virginia– that now have gas below $2 a gallon.

“What we’re seeing is markets at work,” Heritage Foundation economist Nick Loris said. “Significant increases in supply and a relatively weak demand is lowering prices not just at the pump, but for most of the goods and services we pay for.”

The national average has dipped to $2.55 a gallon, marking the lowest drop since October 2009, according to AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report. Just a year ago, that average was $3.23.

“Oil prices are plunging because there is so much oil in the market,” AAA spokesman Mark Jenkins said in a press release. “It’s unclear exactly how long this will continue, but gas prices will keep falling as long as oil prices do.”

Jenkins said oil prices are predicted to continue dropping through the first half of next year, increasing the “likelihood of $2 gasoline.”

CNN partially attributes this drop in prices to decreased oil demand because of the “economic slowdowns” across Europe and Asia along with increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles.

Another key reason for the drop is the increase in U.S. output. Domestic oil production is at a three-decade high, contributing to the increase in supply and driving down costs.

But Loris cautions against celebrating too soon.

“The falling prices are certainly a welcome relief,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean policymakers should ignore the government-imposed regulations and restrictions that artificially inflate prices and prevent markets from working more efficiently.”

Notifications have been sent out to 30,000 residents of Indiana informing them their health insurance plans no longer meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and will be cancelled at the end of this year.

It seems that Terry The Punk McAuliffe(Gov(D.Va) is starting to penalize legal gun owners in Virginia.

Just think of the anti gun legislation yet to come.

Does Virginia have a recall option the deal with the Punk?

With only two days left in the 2014 regular legislative session, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) has made his first attempt to limit the legal use of firearms in Virginia by returning an amendment to House Bill 962 that would further restrict how handguns may be stored in vehicles. Sponsored by Delegate Ben Cline (R-24), HB 962 would codify an Attorney General opinion from 2012 (see here), and a decision of the Virginia Court of Appeals from last year, Doulgerakis v. Com., 737 S.E.2d 40 (Va. Ct. App. 2013). House Bill 962 has passed in the House of Delegates by a 70 to 27 vote as well as in the Senate by a 27 to 13 vote.

This opinion and decision both found that a handgun in a vehicle doesn’t have to be in a locked compartment in the motor vehicle to fit within a statutory exception to the concealed carry prohibition that allows for a person without a permit to conceal a firearm within a secured compartment or “secured” container within a motor vehicle.

The McAuliffe amendment seeks to contradict the opinion and ruling by forcing drivers to keep firearms in a “locked” container rather than being allowed to secure those firearms in a container without a lock as they have lawfully been doing for years. What began as a simple clarification bill would be turned into legislation that is worse than current law.

The House of Delegates is expected to vote on this amendment tomorrow. Please contact your Delegate and respectfully urge him or her to vote against this restrictive amendment.

On a brighter note, as of July 1, hunters in the Commonwealth will finally be permitted to hunt on Sundays on private property with written landowner permission. House Bill 1237 was signed into law yesterday and its Senate companion, Senate Bill 154, is expected soon to be enacted as well.

Please contact the sponsors of these bills,Delegate Todd Gilbert (R-15) and Senator Phil Puckett (D-38), and thank them for their leadership to expand and protect the Commonwealth’s rich hunting heritage and providing greater opportunities to hunt that will strengthen recruitment and retention.

We can use this convention to bring the runaway government back under control.

The Article Five Convention can be used to make our Senators follow our wishes by repealing the 17th Amendment.

With the 17th Amendment being repealed the state legislators will decide who serves as Senator.

You vote against the will of the people in your home state you can and will be fired.

The Article Five Convention can be used to impose terms limits to stop life time House and Senate members.

COS Project Team

This just in from our Virginia state director!

“THIS IS IT!! THE TIME IS NOW!! THE RESOLUTION IS SCHEDULED FOR DEBATE!!

The Virginia House Rules Committee will hear debate and vote on Delegate Lingamfelter’s Convention of States Resolution—HJ9—this Friday. The hearing will begin ½ hour after the House adjourns, and will also include other legislation. The hearing will take place in the Speaker’s Conference Room on the 6th Floor of the General Assembly Building.

If it is possible for you to make it to Richmond this Friday to attend the hearing, please come in person! But whether you can attend in person or not, please, please take just a few minutes right now to call or send an e-mail to each member of the Committee. It does not matter whether you live in their district or not (although if you do, please be sure to point it out).

Please do not underestimate the importance of YOUR call, e-mail and personal visit, because it can absolutely make the difference as to whether this measure passes or not.

Below is the list of committee members, along with their e-mail addresses and phone numbers. You don’t have to say much—the important thing is to request that they vote for Delegate Lingamfelter’s HJ9, calling for an Article V Convention of States to limit the power of the federal government.

If you live in Virginia, we need you to call these committee members today. If you don’t live in Virginia, you can still voice your support! With your help, the COS application will be one step closer to passing in Virginia.

Horrible logic: I’m good at fighting rapists, therefore I’ll be good at fighting the Tea Party. If you can’t get into office without making an implicit comparison of people with a different point of view to rapists, you don’t need to be in office in the first place.

13 WONDERFUL GIFTS: As you celebrate the holiday season, don’t forget the top 13 generous gifts Virginia officials gave the Commonwealth in 2013.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — As you finish Christmas shopping, using all those hard-earned dollars, take comfort in knowing Virginia politicians and bureaucrats have been spending your money just the same.

In 2013, Virginia leaders used taxpayer dollars and time to give back to the commonwealth and the people who put them in power. They’ve doled out millions to an NFL team with a losing record; millions on state equipment that’s gone missing; and hundreds of thousands on the governor’s legal bills, to name just a few.

Of the many ways Virginia officials gifted the commonwealth in 2013, here’s are our top 13 picks:

The Washington Redskins may be embarrassing all their NFL fans this season with a losing record, but don’t blame their malfunction on Virginia government. Richmond city taxpayers forked over $11.2 million to help build the team a new 17-acre practice facility, which it has been using since July. On top of that, Gov. Bob McDonnell handed the team a $4 million grant to keep its headquarters in Virginia. So much for all that taxpayer assistance.

GAME PLAN: With the Washington Redskins’ losing record this year, it looks like all those Virginia tax dollars for their facilities went to waste.

What does desperate look like? Taking on bonds to pay for unfunded city employee pensions. That’s what the Portsmouth City Council decided to do in April when it voted to borrow $175 million so it can have 80 cents for every dollar promised to its 1,200 members, instead of the roughly 30 cents per dollar it had before. The taxpayers, of course, will be footing that bill for years to come.

This summer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded Virginia a $2 million “high performance bonus” for over-issuing “just” $19 million of the $1.4 billion in food stamps it dispersed in fiscal 2012. Of course, all that is taxpayer money. How would you like a bonus at your job for such a small oversight?

What are state agencies doing with all the expensive assets they buy with taxpayer dollars? Nobody knows. From incinerators to grand pianos, Virginia public universities and agencies have lost track of about $8 million in fixed assets since 2010. Nice to know your money is being well spent, right?

There’s no need to fret — the Virginia State Police have your back. And possibly, your license plate information. From 2009 until early 2013, the state police randomly collected license plate data at events such as political rallies. But after Virginia’s attorney general earlier this year said that wasn’t quite legal, the police changed their practice. Now, they destroy any collected data within 24 hours, so long as it isn’t related to an ongoing criminal investigation.

IT’S A BIRD! Virginia is leading the way in drone research, like it or not.

Virginia isn’t only looking out for you on the roads, but from the sky, too. Virginia leaders have volunteered the commonwealth as frontrunners in drone research. Once a moratorium on drone research ends in July 2015, one expert says the technology will invade people’s privacy everywhere.

The governor’s office assured taxpayers everywhere that they were covering Gov. Bob McDonnell’s legal bills only in the governor’s official capacity in the embezzlement case against former Executive Mansion chef Todd Schneider. But when that case finished, the bills continued to come. You can thank the governor for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’s billing you, the taxpayer, to sort out his plethora of personal and professional legal woes.

Before he was elected, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell pledged not to raise taxes. But, with the winter 2013 transportation legislation, he has — by about $6 billion over the next five years — and he had plenty of Republican support to back him up. Your pocketbook will probably feel one of the largest tax increases in recent Virginia memory for years to come. PolitiFact gave the Republican governor a “full flop” ratingfor breaking that promise.

Everyone wants to have nice things. So, while running for governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe pledged those nice things. But, as debate moderators such as NBC’s Chuck Toddpainfully pointed out, McAuliffe has no real way to pay for them. And Medicaid expansion — McAuliffe’s revenue plan — isn’t a reliable piggy bank for funding government, some experts say. The upshot of it all is that if McAuliffe goes forward with his 10-point plan as governor, taxpayers will get the bill someway, somehow.

A NASTY RACE: The nasty race between Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe couldn’t be over soon enough for voters.

It’s bad enough that Virginia’s two major political parties had to pick gubernatorial candidates with larger unfavorable poll ratings than favorable ratings. But on top of that, largely out-of-state donors funneled millions into some of the nastiest TV ads the Old Dominion has seen. And throughout campaign season, Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe focused on attacking each other, rather than honing their own positions. It’s no wonder that 6.5 percent of Virginia voters picked Libertarian Robert Sarvis for governor. And it’s no wonder the most common reaction from people of all political persuasions the day after the election was something along the lines of, “I’m just glad it’s over.”

When governor-elect Terry McAuliffe takes his gubernatorial oath on Jan. 11, he’ll be sworn in against the backdrop of not one, but two federal investigations. The inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are conducting separate inquiries into actions involving McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive company and its use of a federal investor-visa program. Time will tell how those investigations play out during McAuliffe’s term. But Virginians who voted for McAuliffe can’t complain on this one. They asked for this gift when they gave him 47.74 percent of the vote Nov. 5.

Above perhaps all else, Virginians value honor. So when the story unraveled throughout early 2013 that Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife had dubious ties to a wealthy businessman and accepted thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of gifts from him, Virginians everywhere lamented. And with that scandal, the “Virginia Way” — the term Virginians associate with the state’s history of honor, trust, mutual respect and compromise — was perhaps forever stained. The scandal isn’t just embarrassing to the governor and to the state’s lax gift and disclosure laws, but also to the entire commonwealth. Perhaps the best true gift Virginia politicians could offer in 2014 arestronger disclosure laws to help mend the state’s transparency for taxpayers and reputation to the rest of the country.

— Kathryn Watson is an investigative reporter for Watchdog.org’s Virginia Bureau, and can be reached at kwatson@watchdog.org.

Beretta USA’s general counsel Jeff Reh said, “The anti-gun ads that McAuliffe ran in northern Virginia were particularly offensive. And the fact that he could gain a voting advantage by doing so caused us additional concern.”

Red added: “All this was a real disappointment because of the great pro-gun and pro-business response we received from the Commonwealth and local political and business leaders throughout our search process in [the state].”

Until McAuliffe was elected VA was “one of six finalist locations” being considered by Beretta executives.

On Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, Virginia Republican Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli said a Terry McAuliffe administration in Virginia would be a “threat to liberty.” He urged Virginians to “send Washington a message” by voting against McAuliffe on Tuesday.

Cuccinelli mentioned that McAuliffe did not think Obamacare went far enough when he advocated a public option and said President Barack Obama’s appearance in Virginia on Sunday on behalf of McAuliffe was a “blessing” because it brought a “crystal-clear focus to Obamacare in Virginia and what a disaster that is.”

“He wants more of this,” Cuccinelli said of McAuliffe and Obamacare.

Cuccinelli mentioned Democrats in Virginia that now want to force doctors to take Medicare patients. He said this is going to be the next step in the healthcare battle, and “this is what you get with someone like a McAuliffe.”

“This is a threat to liberty,” Cuccinelli said. “This is a denial of liberty.”

Cuccinelli urged listeners to volunteer and help get his message out to Virginians on Monday and Tuesday, reiterating that the commonwealth should “send Washington a message that Virginians say ‘No’ to Obamacare.” He said his campaign was continuing to recruit volunteers in the final days of the race. He also mentioned that McAuliffe is being financed by Michael Bloomberg, who wants more gun control, and radical California environmentalists.